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单选题Questions are based on the following passage.
How to Buy Things in the Future
[A] Now cash and plastic are fading in popularity, and possibly faster than you realize. Maybe you already pay for your morning coffee with just your mobile phone. Soon enough, thanks to advances in biometrics, you might pay with just your face. Well before the end of the century, wallets will likely be museum pieces.
[B] Futurists sometimes joke that the prospect of a cashless society is much like that of a flying car, it's often promised, but it never materializes. And yet some banks in Sweden no longer dispense cash. Most airlines won't accept cash for in-flight purchases. A number of restaurants, including New York's Commerce, have begun refusing greenbacks, accepting only credit and debit cards."It's more portable, and no one has to worry about losing money," says Tony Zazula, Commerce's owner, who notes that the change has made accounting much simpler. Here, drawn from interviews with futurists, economists, executives, and entrepreneurs, are other predictions about the future of money.
[C] The shift from credit cards to phone-based payment systems is, of course, well under way. Starbucks, for example, says that 13 million people actively use its mobile app, which allows customers to debit prepaid Starbucks accounts. And this summer, a union of 70 chains (members include CVS and Walmart., will launch a version of an app called CurrentC in a test market. The group hopes that the app will eventually let people in 110,000 locations pay (out of their checking accounts) via phone. Such apps will use customer data to offer shoppers targeted coupons, and could give merchants a newly detailed look at what consumers are buying, says Ben Jackson, an industry analyst with Mercator Advisory Group.
[D] As mobile-payment technologies improve, checking out stands to get speedier. Both Current C and the Starbucks app ask customers to scan a bar code on their phone. Apple Pay and Google Wallet likewise require a consumer to pull out her phone and hold it to a reader. Future mobile-payment systems could use Bluetooth Low Energy technology, which doesn't require a customer to be as close to a checkout counter. (Already, some Safeway and Macy's stores use iBeacon, Apple's indoor positioning system, to push deals to iPhones). For that matter, Jeremy Epstein, a senior computer scientist at the research institute SRI International, thinks checkouts could pretty easily be dispensed with altogether. If Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags were attached to merchandise, a sensor at a store exit could register both a customer's phone and the RFID tags on whatever she was carrying, and those items would be hers.
[E] Merchants can be slow to adopt technologies that are costly to install. But many retailers have already begun upgrading their systems to accept mobile payments, and we may be surprised by how quickly phone-based transactions increase. For one thing, allowing customers to pay by phone can save retailers costly credit-card transaction fees, Jackson says. For another, mobile payments tend to be more secure than credit-card transactions. In some new mobile-payment systems, when a phone is scanned, no bank-account data are passed through the cloud; if hackers broke in, they'd see only the unique strings of numbers that are generated for each purchase, which are useless for anything else. In the aftermath of recent data breaches, this security edge may be especially compelling to retailers. "I have a feeling that 20 years from now, everything now done by plastic will be done by a smartphone," says Robert Litan, an economist at the Brookings Institution.
[F] Phones are only the beginning. RFID tags are already so small that they could fit in a watch, or even under your skin. Such implants aren't science fiction: one techie, Areal Graafstra, has written about how he installed RFID tags in his hands and RFID readers on various doors in lieu of locks, so that he wouldn't have to bother with keys anymore.
[G] Eventually, biometrics might allow you to carry (or implant. nothing at all) A Swedish start-up called Quixter has outfitted stores at Lund University with a system that lets students pay by having the vein patterns in their hands scanned.
[HI Iris (虹膜) scanners have potential, too -- they're hard to trick, and eyes, unlike hands, don't change much with age, says Hector Hoyos, the founder of Hoyos Labs, which works on identity-authentication technologies. Hoyos thinks payments could one day be processed automatically --imagine your eyes being scanned as you enter an amusement park, the price of admission being deducted from your bank account as you get in line for your first ride.
[I] Scott Rankin, the chief operating officer of Merchant Customer Exchange, the consortium (财团 .behind CurrentC, says users will be able to alter their privacy settings to ensure that information about what they buy isn't used or shared. But as Epstein, the computer scientist at SRI, points out, many people won't mind sharing data if they believe they're being compensated with good deals."Most people are fundamentally lazy and will do whatever is easiest," he told me. "What's going to be easiest is not being anonymous."
[J] Not so long ago, it looked as if we might be on our way to a single global currency, or two or three. European countries eagerly abandoned their national currencies in favor of the euro; in 2009,Zimbabwe began using other countries' currencies. Economically, these experiments haven't worked out well. And in fact, as digital technologies advance, shoppers are likely to use more currencies rather than fewer. From a merchant's perspective, accepting digital pesos or rubles is less costly than accepting foreign bills and coins.
[K] As mobile technologies let stores track shoppers' behavior more closely, customer-loyalty programs are likely to become more prominent, says Heather Schlegel, a futurist. Better data on buying habits will likely lead to more-targeted, and therefore more-enticing, offers. Stores might well begin to accept one another's loyalty points: already, gamers can use Subway and Burger King gift cards to buy virtual goods for online games; down the road, you might be able to use, say, your Disney Dollars to pay for things at Walmart.
[L] Today, retail customers' most frequent interactions with banks involve cash and credit cards. As cash disappears and phones replace plastic, banks may struggle to remain relevant. Already, around the world, new services are enabling people to move money without any bank at all. In Korea,for example, people load value onto T-money cards, which started out as fare cards (the T is for "transportation". and can now be used in taxis and at vending machines. In Kenya and other parts of the developing world, people can walk into a convenience store, deposit cash into an account managed by a service called M-Pesa, then transfer the money to other users via text message.
[M] Theoretically, the more popular alternative financial instruments and currencies become, the less control national governments will have -- over law enforcement, over taxation, over the very functioning of their economies. After all, if most Americans were to start using bit coins or rewards points as everyday currencies, fewer dollars would circulate in the economy, and the Federal Reserve's ability to affect the supply of money and regulate interest rates would in turn be limited.
As digital technologies advance, it is likely to have more currencies rather than fewer.
参考答案J
解析:本文主要讲述了几种支付账单的趋势。[A]、[B]段指出未来将是无现金社会。[C]-[E]段讲述了手机支付手段。[F卜[I]段指出随着科技的发展，未来可能只需扫描身体某个特定部位便可完成支付。[J]、[K]段指出随着数字技术的进步，未来将会出现更多种类的货币。[L]、[M]段指出随着现金失势，未来银行和政府的影响力将变小。
未来人们将如何支付账单?
【A】现在，现金和信用卡日渐式微，衰落速度可能比你感觉得还要快，或许你早已用手机在早上买了一杯咖啡。由于生物统计学的发展，很快，你就可以刷脸付钱了。【39】不用等到本世纪末，钱包很可能会被放到博物馆当展览品了。
【B】未来学家有时开玩笑说，无现金社会的发展前景同飞行汽车的发展前景一样：看起来是有希望的，实际是不可能实现的。然而，瑞典的一些银行不再提供现金；多数航空公司的机上交易将不接受现金付款；【45】包括纽约科莫斯在内的许多饭店已经拒收美钞，只接受信用卡和借记卡付款。“卡方便携带，人们也不用担心丢钱。”科莫斯饭店的老板托尼·扎祖拉说道他指出，用卡付款使得结算更简单在此，通过访问一些未来学家、经济学家、高管和企业家，我们整理了其他一些关于未来货币的预言．
【C】当然，信用卡已经开始逐渐被手机支付系统代替了。例如，星巴克称，已经有1300万的人在积极使用它的手机应用，这一应用允许顾客预付星巴克账单。【42】今年夏天，包括美国CVS连锁药店和沃尔玛在内的70家连锁公司组成了一个联盟，即将在测试市场推出一款名为CurrentC的应用程序他们希望这款应用程序最终能让人们用手机(绑定其存款账户.在l10000家商店进行支付。麦凯德国际咨询集团的市场分析师本·杰克逊说：“该类应用程序将会分析客户数据，从而有针对性的提供给消费者优惠券，并且提供给商家最新最详细的消费者购物信息。”
【D】随着手机支付技术的提高，支付变得更快捷。CurrentC和星巴克应用程序都要求顾客用手机扫描二维码、苹果支付和谷歌钱包同样要求顾客掏出手机向店员展示支付结果。未来的手机支付系统会使用蓝牙低耗能技术，这样消费者就不用跑到收银台进行支付。(部分西夫韦和梅西超市早已开始使用苹果的室内定位系统“必肯”，来向苹果手机推送账单。)因此，斯坦福国际研究所的资深计算机科学家杰里米·爱泼斯坦认为收银台很容易就可以全部被取缔。如果在商品上加上射频识别(RFID.标签，商场出口的感应器就可以同时记录顾客的手机和她所拿的所有商品的射频识别标签，然后，这些东西就是她的了一
【E】商人总是不愿采用昂贵的技术。但是许多零售商已经开始更新系统以接受手机支付，我们或许会惊讶于手机支付交易的增长速度之快。杰克逊指出，一方面，让顾客用手机支付可以为零售商省下一笔高额的信用卡交易手续费，另一方面，【37】手机支付比信用卡支付安全性高。在一些新的手机支付系统里，当手机被扫描的时候，没有任何银行账户数据被上传到云端；如果黑客闯进，他们看到的只是为每次交易生成的一串串的毫无用处的数字。经历了最近的几次数据泄露后，手机支付的安全性对零售商来说尤其具有吸引力。“我感觉，20年后，智能手机会取代塑料卡片的一切功能、”布鲁金斯研究所的经济学家罗伯特·里坦这样说道。
【F】手机支付只是开始。【43】射频识别(RFID.标签早已变得小到可以装进手表里或是植入皮肤下层。这类植入并不是科幻片里的场景：阿迈勒·格拉芙斯特拉是一名科技控，他已经发表文章讲解他是如何把射频识别标签植入自己手里并且用射频识别标签识读器代替锁装到各个门上的，这样他就不必再为各种钥匙伤脑筋。
【G】最后，生物统计学可能让你不必携带(或植入.任何东西。【44】瑞典一家新成立的名叫Quixter的公司已经给兰德大学的商店装上了一套系统，学生们付账时，只需让该系统扫描一下他们手掌内的静脉结构即可。【H】霍约斯实验室(致力于研究身份验证技术.的创始人赫克托·霍约斯说，【40】虹膜扫描仪也很有潜力，它们不容易上当，并且，眼睛不同于手，不会随着年龄发生改变的。霍约斯认为．总有一天，支付流程会自动化——想象一下，当你走进游乐场时，你的眼睛被扫描，等你排队等待玩第一个游乐设施的时候，你的入场费就被从银行账户里划走了。
【I】商家客户交易(MCE，CurrentC背后的财团.的首席运营官斯科特·兰金说，用户可以改变隐私设置来保证他们的购物信息不被利用或共享。但是斯坦福研究院的计算机科学家爱泼斯坦指出，如果知道自己能获得一些好处，很多人并不介意分享数据。“大多数人都比较懒，最愿意省事儿。”他告诉我，“最省事的做法就是不要匿名。”
【J】不久之前，看起来似乎我们有可能最终使用单一的或两三种全球货币。为了支持欧元，欧洲的各个国家迫不及待地抛弃了本国货币；2009年，津巴布韦开始用其他国家的货币从经济上来说．这些举措没有起到好的效果。【36】实际上，随着数字技术的进步，购物者很可能使用更多种类的货币而非更少种类的货币。从一个商人的角度来说，接受电子的比索或卢布比接受外国纸币或硬币更经济实惠
【K】由于移动支付技术使得商店能紧密跟踪消费者的购物行为，客户忠诚计划就有可能变得十分重要，未来学家希瑟·施莱格尔如是说。掌握了顾客购买习惯的数据，商家很可能会推出更有针对性更诱人的服务。各个商店可能会开始接受彼此的忠诚积分：游戏玩家已经可以用地铁和汉堡王的礼品卡为网络游戏买虚拟商品；【41】将来，你可能可以用迪士尼钱币在沃尔玛买东西
【L】现在，零售业的顾客和银行之间的日常交易都是跟现金和信用卡有关的随着现金失势，手机代替塑料卡片，银行恐怕难以维持其重要地位。在世界范围内，新服务早已使人们不必通过银行来转移资金、比如，在韩国，人们十分倚重交通卡(T-money cards，T指交通.，这种卡由最初的车费卡演变而来，如今可在出租车和自动贩卖机上使用。【38】在肯尼亚和其他一些发展中国家，人们可以走进便利店，把现金存到由“移动货币”(M．Pesa.这一服务经营的账户里，然后再通过短信把钱转给其他的用户
【M】理论上来说，可供选择的金融工具和货币越受欢迎，政府对法律执行、税收、经济运行的控制力就越弱。毕竟，如果大部分美国人都开始把比特币或奖赏积分作为每天的货币，经济社会里流通的美元就会越来越少，那么联邦储备局影响货币供应和调控利率的能力就会受到限制：
【定位】根据题目中的as digital technologies advance，more currencies和rather than fewer可将本题出处定位于【J】段倒数第2句．
【解析】【J】。【J】段倒数第2句提到，实际上，随着数字技术的进步，购物者很可能使用更多种类的货币而非更少种类的货币。题目是对该句的同义转述。